


Driver's Ed

by NerdWhoSaysNi



Series: Marvel Oneshots [3]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Comedy, Driver's Ed, Funny, Gen, New York City, Stark Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 20:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16523684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdWhoSaysNi/pseuds/NerdWhoSaysNi
Summary: Loki learns to drive.-----------“You’ll be fine, just keep going.” Cars were honking and passing them as they gradually gained speed. “The average speed on this highway is seventy-five, just get us to sixty-five or you’re going to cause road rage.” Bri gestured to a speed limit sign as they passed it.“What’s road rage?”“It’s when shitty drivers make other drivers angry, then the angry drivers do something dangerous.”“What happens if I cause road rage?”“It means you’re a shitty driver.”





	Driver's Ed

**Author's Note:**

> Based on my own experiences in Driver's Ed. I couldn't turn left to save my life.

“Left! Left!” Bri squealed. “No, your other left!” She covered her eyes and listened to the screech of tires and honking of horns around them. “Oh god, we’re gunna die.” When she felt they were driving straight again, she uncovered her eyes and glared at Loki. “You had the left blinker on. You looked left. You were in the left lane. The left arrow was green. Why the hell did you not turn left?”

Loki cringed and kept his eyes straight ahead to avoid bursting into flames under Bri’s stare. “You’re making me nervous. It’s hard to focus when you keep snapping at me like that.”

“You could have gotten us killed!” She spotted a gas station ahead and pointed to it through the windshield. “Pull in there. It’s on the right. You should have no problem turning right since you can’t turn left.” He started to slow down slowly, then much too quickly. “What are you doing? Don’t stop, just kind of roll. No, I said, uggghhhh.” She heaved a deep breath as they crawled towards the station and turned into the lot at a snail’s pace. “Do you feel confident pulling up to a pump?”

“What?” 

“Pull up to a pump.” She found a free one and pointed ahead. “Over there. The tank is on the passenger’s side.” As they neared the gas pumps, she began to realize this wasn’t as easy for him as she had assumed. “Here, nevermind, just stop here.” The car jerked to a halt and Bri was thrown forward in her seat. The seatbelt locked and she choked on her next complaint. “Gently. Gentle on the brake.”

“Sorry,” he cringed. 

“Nevermind. C’mon, roll forward. You’re in the way.” A car behind them was waiting to pull in after them and the driver honked briefly. Loki followed Bri’s instructions and let the car roll towards a pump. “A little faster, maybe?” The car didn’t increase pace, just hit a pothole and knocked her shoulder into the window. “A liiiiittle faster?”

“I don’t want to hit anything.” 

“Fine, just stop here. Put her in park. Shut off the engine.” The car stopped next to a pump, then Loki hovered his hand over the shifter. “Park. Engine off.”

“I know. I just-”

“Park. Loki, put it in park.”

“I don’t know-” 

“Oh, for crying out loud!” She smacked his hand away and shifted the car to park. “Now shut it off.” When his hand didn’t immediately go to the keys, she rolled her eyes and shut the car off. “Get out. Get the hell out.” Bri would not have ever laid a hand on him if it hadn’t been to hurt him, but now she was pushing him out of the driver’s seat before he had even finished getting the seatbelt off. 

Bri got out her side and popped the cover for the gas tank. “Why did you park so far away? Damn.” She did her best to stretch the hose to the car and just barely made it fit as long as she kept holding it. “Come here.” She gestured him closer and showed him how to use the gas pump. “And if you ever have questions, the instructions are clearly written in numbered steps right on the pump.” 

When they got back into the car, Bri took a deep breath. “Okay. Since we’re parked, let’s talk for a minute. Seatbelt first.” She waited for him to put his seatbelt on before she began to talk. “You want to learn how to drive? Then we’re doing things my way. This is my car, you follow my rules. Got it?” Loki nodded, and she continued, “Ignition. First click turns on windows and radio, second click is the lights and heat, third click is on. Only turn it until you hear the engine turn over and then immediately release. Listen.” She turned the key to each click so he could see the effects, then turned the car on. “This handle here is the shifter. This line of letters here is where you’re at. Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, then higher, but you won’t need anything higher than Drive. You have to push the brake, pull towards you, then move it into place. These wheels here are your gauges. Gas, speed, heat of the engine, RPMs, and mileage. They’re pretty self-explanatory. Are you with me so far?” Loki nodded and she kept going before he could talk. “Mirrors. Rearview, side mirrors, and I have little circular mirrors on the side mirrors to help even further. Learn how to use them. It won’t be easy at first, I’ll give you that, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

Bri checked the space around them and watched a car pull out of the way. “Okay, put it in drive and pull onto the road again. We’re going to turn left this time. Before we move anywhere, raise your left hand.” She noticed his hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two so tightly that his knuckles were turning white, but he pried his left hand off the wheel and lifted it so she could see. “See that hand? You’re turning in that direction. Understand?” 

Nodding, Loki actually cracked a smile and replaced his hand on the wheel, his knuckles turning white again. “Bri, thank you for doing this for me. I really do appreciate it and it means a lot. I’m sorry for taking up your day with it, but I want to impress Hal when she gets back and she’ll be back tomorrow. So thank you for-”

“You’re welcome,” she interrupted, “but people are getting impatient. Put it in drive and pull out.”

Loki shifted into drive like she had told him to do and pulled towards the exit. Left blinker, leftrightleft, and he turned out. As Bri gave him directions, she also gave him tips on how to drive more smoothly or how to judge distances and the speeds of other cars. Finally, they merged onto the highway and Bri watched the speedometer slowly climb upwards. “A little faster. Keep going. Faster. The speed limit is sixty-five, you’re doing fifty. C’mon, get us up to speed.” 

“I don’t know, Bri, this feels really fast.”

“You’ll be fine, just keep going.” Cars were honking and passing them as they gradually gained speed. “The average speed on this highway is seventy-five, just get us to sixty-five or you’re going to cause road rage.”

“What’s road rage?”

“It’s when shitty drivers make other drivers angry, then the angry drivers do something dangerous.”

“What happens if I cause road rage?”

“It means you’re a shitty driver.” She watched more cars start passing them before finally reaching over and looking at his feet on the petals. “That’s why you aren’t accelerating. Get your left foot off the brake. You only use one foot when driving. Brake or gas, never both. God, I thought that was obvious.” 

Loki cringed and moved his left foot to the side out of the way. “I think I’ve seen Haley use her left foot before.”

“Yeah, but that’s more advanced than where you’re at. Generally, just never use both feet. If you have to stop going up a hill, then you can have one foot on the brake and one on the gas, but wait until you’re comfortable with normal driving first.”

He nodded and guided them around a few curves. When Bri pointed out the exit to get off, she felt the brakes kick in again. “No, no, just coast down the ramp. Coasting. No gas, no brake.” This was going to be harder than she thought. “At the end of the ramp, turn right.”

He followed her directions into a small town and stopped at a four-way intersection. Bri watched the car in front of them roll forward, and began to explain. “At intersections like this, it’s first come, first go, but if you’re turning left, you have to yield. So now, they’ll go, then them, and since you’re going straight, and they’re turning, you go now.”

He drove forward until they found themselves at another intersection. “Turn left. So you’ll be the last to go.” 

When it came to Loki’s turn, he started turning left, but jerkily. Bri could feel her head and momentum being yanked forwards and backwards. He cut the corner and almost clipped the car pulling up to the intersection on the other side of the lines. “Pull into your own lane next time. And try to turn smoother. You want to slow into a turn, then accelerate when the car is in the right lane.”

They continued down a long, windy route at a comfortable pace for awhile. “You said Hal gets back tomorrow?” Bri started, trying for a civil conversation. 

“Yeah. She’s coming back from a trip to Canada. It should have been a mission, but she and Clint had it finished early, so they went hiking for a week instead. She’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, and we’re going into the mountains for a picnic. And I just really want to surprise her. She always drives when we go out, and I thought it would be nice for her to relax and enjoy the ride while I drove.”

“But you can’t drive.”

“I couldn’t, no. I’m feeling more confident now, but I didn’t want her to always have to drive me around. I wanted to learn how to drive myself. It’s freedom for both of us.” Loki turned into the parking lot she pointed out. “Why are we turning here?”

“To practice parking. You can’t say you know how to drive without knowing how to park. And believe me, parking is a hell of a lot harder than driving.”

And it proved to be more of a challenge than Bri anticipated. Diagonal parking ended up with Loki learning how to aim. Turn-in parking was an adventure of spacing and inching into places the car should have fit and somehow didn’t. With an hour of practice, Loki could park diagonally on both sides and turn in on the right, but he maintained an inability to turn left. Bri was hesitant to practice backing in, but she knew it was necessary. Another two hours and Loki could back in on both sides too. Should they try parallel parking? Bri didn’t want to put her car in jeopardy. But parallel parking was probably the most common way of parking in the city and kind of necessary. So she endured another two teeth-grinding, heart-stopping, stress-pumping hours of parking with Loki. She was surprised how well he did on what most people considered the most difficult part of the driving test, but it still wasn’t easy, it just wasn’t as hard as it could have been.

When Bri was satisfied, she directed Loki back to the highway and towards the Tower again. This time, she tried to give him as many right turns as possible. They arrived in the tower garage and Loki parked successfully in the same spot they had pulled out of. “Not bad. You’ve got a license right?” When he nodded, she pursed her lips. “I don’t know how you passed before today, but I think if you had to take it again, you could pass.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome. Don’t get too happy about it. You still can’t turn left.”

The next day, Loki spent the morning practicing driving and used the few hours before Hal got back to put their picnic together. He made them peanut butter and jam sandwiches and remembered to pack the peanut butter jar and a spoon for Hal, tubs of fresh blueberries, strawberries, and grapes, slices of cheeses, celery and hummus, and a bottle of Haley’s favorite Moscato. It was the same picnic they took to Asgard on the first anniversary of when they started dating. The mountains upstate weren’t exactly the Asgardian mountains, but it would still be a nice backdrop.

The door to the kitchen opened, and the next moment, Hal was in his arms. He scooped her into his arms and pressed his cheek to her hair. “Welcome back, love.” After a few quick kisses, they parted and Haley got some water from the fridge. “I have a surprise for you when you’re ready to go for the picnic,” he said.

“Ooh, a surprise?” She smiled and leaned against his side. “Your surprises are always the sweetest. How did I get so lucky to have such a thoughtful husband?” She gave him another kiss before disappearing upstairs to change.

They met up in the garage and Loki tucked the picnic basket on the floor behind the passenger’s seat in Haley’s car. When she came down, he held the passenger’s door for her and smiled when she looked curiously up at him. “What’s this?”

“I thought you could use a rest after your trip. I’ll drive this time. Bri spent all day out yesterday teaching me, and I thought- What? Why are you laughing?”

Haley took his face in her hands and smiled endearingly before giving him a kiss. “I appreciate your effort and the motive, and I’m proud of you accomplishing this. But you can’t drive us to the mountains today.” When he still looked confused, she showed him the pedals in her car. “Loki, Bri drives an automatic. I drive a standard.”


End file.
